https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxz7K6NKHyo
Alexander's three-question methodology can help pinpoint someone's developmental range in real-time.
First: What world can they actually see? Someone operating from concrete thinking literally cannot perceive the systemic forces that are obvious to someone with subtle awareness.
Second: Are they exploring individual identity or collective belonging? This reveals whether they're in the first two stages of any tier (developing the individual) or the second two stages (developing the collective).
Third: What's their learning preference — receptive, active, reciprocal, or interpenetrative? This final question narrows twelve possibilities down to one.
29:33: Alexander inverts the model
Primordial movement
"What is their preferred relationship to process, or learning"
Interpenetrative: like two clouds passing through each other
The beginning of each tier is like being a baby again
x.0 and x.5 are the emergence and maturation, respectively, of the xth person perspective
1st-person: me in the concrete world
2nd-person: me and you (I-Thou)
3rd-person: me in the world of self-reflection, emerges from the complexity of iterated, generalized "me and you"
4th-person: subtle me and you: can see self-construction as context-dependent
5th-person: me as awareness, can see all contexts as constructed
6th-person: all context construction is a unified interdependent unfolding
Stages Matrix Roadmap (linked below):
At 2.5, one Interpenetrates with their principles upon reflection;
At 4.5 one sees the Interpenetration of self with other through their projections upon reflection;
At 6.5, the fullness of all manifestation and the emptiness of all levels of awareness Interpenetrates and is seen upon reflection.
2020 Integral Review paper
STAGES Matrix Roadmap
Slide deck in Dropbox
Dustin's slides in Dropbox
Growing up: stage development
Waking up: state development
Cleaning up: shadow recognition
Showing up: conduct
Integration, bypassing
Primordial pairs of subject-object splits
Each of Ken Wilber's quadrants has a static-dynamic pulse... "God's rocking chair"
difference from other models: maps out the structures rather than the meaning-making
The point of all of this: "How are we with people as they move through these stages?"
Our journey through the perspectives
concrete individual receptive
the newborn, undifferentiated from the ground
1.0 -> 1.5: Receptive -> Active as one discovers agency, the self
concrete individual active
me, mine
Four kinds of power: emotional, cognitive, behavioral, social
What is thinking? Visualizing, talking to the self, kinesthetic urges
Don't touch my stuff, it's mine
Active learning: the precursor to project management
Having a hovering parent who does things for you instead of letting you fumble-learn through them can lead not only to lack of trust in one's ability to figure out new things, but also to a "passive narcissism" where you feel entitled to have someone else do the work for you
Can't yet see yourself being seen by the other
Monks' begging was also a concrete generosity practice for lay people. Also, prostrations. Practices for the 1.5 -> 2.0 shift have to work at the concrete level. Adaptive leadership means meeting the person with practice (and communication generally) that speaks to their level.
concrete collective reciprocal
purpose is to belong, to have a friend
the birth of pronouns: sometimes i'm Me and sometimes i'm You. it's the first time the labels don't stick
belonging -> fairness -> measurement -> analysis
concrete-operational development motivated by relationality
tit-for-tat: i give you something, you give me something
concrete collective interpenetrative
purpose is interpenetration with the collective
interpenetration is more than reciprocality, it's a kind of identity or unity: seeing the self in the other, or more poetically, discovering the other in the self. "I am you, you are me"
not unifying absolute and relative, but two relative aspects
formal-operational
introjecting from the collective, then projecting: an autocratic "safe loop" accepted without question
the past is the future
the X.0 stages don't have as much reflective capacity as their X.5 counterparts
learning by doing, getting experience
the witness also grows up
Lunch break: Susan recommends the eight-stage map of Bill Plotkin's book Nature and the Human Soul, grounded in the natural world
2.5 -> 3.0: three-parameter change / tier change
concrete -> subtle, collective -> individual, interpenetrative -> receptive
reaching limits of interpenetration with the collective (tribal -> systematic)
again Terri emphasizes "studying the structural, not just the meaning-making"
concrete -> subtle: working with "objects" whose boundaries you can't precisely define in concrete terms
subtle individual receptive
purpose is "who am I?"
visualization becomes more abstract
experimentation in all dimensions
primordial pairs: subtle "me", experience grows ideas, passive vs. active
3.0 -> 3.5: discovery of the interior self (upshift of 1.0 -> 1.5)
subtle individual active
purpose is achieving my dream
"I see me-my subtle self. I can initiate action now and see years out into the future."
getting what you want, subtly.
society: competition-consumerism
can't yet see yourself being seen by the other--subtly. (mimetic desire?)
subtle ownership: patent, copyright, brand
meta: don't misuse this model to say "this or this is how I'm supposed to be"; it's a tool for broadening your perspective
ways of looking at state, stage, conduct
and there's so much that an assessment can't tell you
people who are very intelligent, who can grasp many things about complex adaptive systems, yet are still lacking some understanding of reciprocity
typology aside: some types may be fixed/non-emergent, and some types are ego-states, expressions of parts, which can grow up
shadow aside: "the realization is coming through a structure that's not fully integrated"
3.5 -> 4.0: reached the goal and still lacking something. feeling tired from all the doing and starting to appreciate just being in a new way
subtle collective reciprocal
reciprocity between interior parts (Internal Family Systems)
exterior reciprocality: you can see something about me that I can't see about myself, and vice versa
it's more accurate to speak of levels of capacity coming online vs. "the self" operating completely at a given level. that is, when you're "at" a given level, it's like the highest point of a structure, and all the levels below it are still operational.
what is a subtle collective?
sitting in a circle (Green meme)
"aperspectival madness"
Retreat Week / "what is this group for?"
getting to a Yes together without starting with a shared goal
subtle collective interpenetrative
seeing that everyone is in a growing-up process, including myself
people have the right to be at their own developmental level
projection exercise:
4.5 -> 5.0: everything I perceive is inside of my awareness
another three-parameter change:
subtle -> metaware, collective -> individual, interpenetrative -> receptive
metaware individual receptive
upshift of 1.0 and 3.0's "who am I?" question
emptiness of language and meaning
refinement of the auditory-kinesthetic senses into awareness of presencing as a somatic vibratory quality
the dawning of awareness that your reality is not just socially but individually constructed (perceptually, i.e. Five Aggregates)
5.0 -> 5.5: "I wonder if boundaries are empty"
metaware individual active
boundlessness
aside: people who assess at a higher stage also assess across a broader range of stages: more capacity for complexity, more awareness of parts. relevant frame: "leading edge, trailing edge, center of gravity"
the words "depression" and "anxiety" moved from signifying 3.0-3.5 to 2.0-2.5 as they became more mainstream
striving doesn't lead to developing into a later level. healthy conduct, states, stages, & shadow work (the Four Ups) is what does. "instead of thinking about five years from now, can you make today really healthy?"
multiple contingencies
hall of mirrors
do no harm
boundless + timeless + changeless merge -> 6.0
individual -> collective, active -> reciprocal
metaware collective reciprocal
sees wholes rather than parts
upshift of 4.0's "I am a child of the universe"
the collective here is all of reality
sees the vastness of the relative
metaware collective interpenetrative
dharmakaya
interpenetration of the relative and the absolute
7.0 and beyond... ?
Perhaps we're a middle species, not an end species
What kind of a mind do we want to support the possibility of a species that goes beyond us?
Take the Four Immeasurables
Notice that the labels imply boundaries
What happens when you drop the boundaries?